Posted on 05/08/2018 9:48:58 AM PDT by Signalman
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans on repealing an Obama-era requirement effectively mandating all new coal-fired power plants be outfitted with unproven emissions technology, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
EPA will modify the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for power plants as part of its effort to repeal the Clean Power Plan (CPP) — the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s climate agenda. EPA will drop the de facto requirement that new coal plants install carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology Obama administration critics said would make it nearly impossible to build new coal plants.
“It’s fantastic that the Trump EPA is repealing the Obama EPA’s ban on new coal-fired power plants,” Junkscience.com publisher Steve Milloy told TheDCNF.
It’s not clear exactly how EPA will modify NSPS, but dropping the CCS mandate could mean raising carbon dioxide emissions limits for new power plants to a threshold that allows more highly efficient plants to be bun the past, coal plant operators have called for higher emissions limits to allow the building of supercritical and ultra supercritical units. Only one ultra supercritical coal plant, the Turk power plant, is operating in the U.S.
“While no new standard is really necessary since U.S. coal plants already burn coal cleanly and safely, kudos to the Trump EPA for requiring only the best existing and affordable technology,” said Milloy, who served on President Donald Trump’s EPA transition team.
The Obama administration finalized the NSPS in 2015, which set limits on how much carbon dioxide new power plants could emit. Emission rates for coal plants were set so low new plants would have to install CCS technology.
When the EPA finalized NSPS in 2015, the coal industry said it would effectively kill coal-fired power in the U.S. because it mandated unproven technology. EPA and environmentalists argued CCS was a viable technology. “Highly efficient supercritical pulverized coal unit with partial carbon capture and storage” was the best way to meet emissions limits, EPA found.
“This final standard of performance for newly constructed fossil fuel-fired steam generating units provides a clear and achievable path forward for the construction of such sources while addressing GHG emissions and supporting technological innovation,” EPA wrote in its 2015 regulation.
There were no operating U.S. power plants with CCS when the Obama administration promulgated its rule. To get around that fact, EPA relied heavily on a Canadian government-backed project CCS called Boundary Dam.
However, Boundary Dam only retrofitted a single coal-fired unit with CCS — not an entire power plant. The project has captured more than 2 million metric tons of CO2, but it’s come at a steep price of nearly $1.2 billion.
The Obama EPA also cited U.S. projects in development to argue CCS was “technically feasible to implement at fossil fuel-fired steam generating units.” But all of those projects were government-funded, which GOP lawmakers argued violated the Environmental Policy Act of 2005.
For example, Southern Company’s Kemper power plant in Mississippi was one project EPA highlighted in its 2015 rule, but the plant suffered from massive delays and cost overruns. Building Kemper ended up costing more than $7 billion.
On top of that, Kemper would not use its CCS equipment and instead burn natural gas, Southern CEO Thomas Fanning announced in 2017. Federal lawmakers are pushing legislation to further subsidize CCS to make the technology viable.
“Though the Obama EPA rule would technically have allowed coal plants that captured and stored about 50 percent of their CO2 emissions,” Milloy said, “that standard was known to be financially, physically and politically impossible to meet for any existing or imagined coal plant.”
“The Obama standard was de facto ban on new coal plants,” Milloy said.
Next,
The Constitution gives the feds no sweeping authority over environmental issues.
Environmental issues are states" issues.
What was that word again? Oh yeah,
WINNING!
God bless America.
Trump has almost completely erased Obama’s disastrous legacy. I am so thankful he is our president.
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The important question is when will Tump’s EPA change the CAFE rules to measure true efficiency by using only Ton-Miles Per Gallon?
This would greatly benefit everyone.
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I wonder how much we could have subsidized CCS if Obama did not waste a half billion dollars and more on certain failures such as Solyndra?
Well, there are still plenty of assclown lib judges willing to toss injunctions out there for the right amount of money. Oh, did I say that out loud? I must have meant to save the children and the planet. Yeah, that’s it.
Trump should come out and say (or tweet), that now electricity prices will ‘necessarily plummet’.
Last I knew NYS gets less than 2% of its electricity from coal fired plants. We ought to build. But we wont.
You don't really think all that money went to Solyndra (and others like it) do you?
An awful lot used to come down from Quebec Hydro. Years ago, they had far more than they knew what to do with.
As a side note to this thread, please consider the following.
Patriots are reminded that the states have never expressly constitutionally delegated to the feds the specific power to dictate policy for the environment.
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
And even if the states had given such power to the feds, corrupt Congress is wrong to front-end “federal,” actually stolen state powers, with non-elected bureaucrats. Non-elected federal regulatory bureaucrats effectively nullify voting power imo.
Patriots need to elect new Trump-supporting, state sovereignty-respecting lawmakers in the 2018 midterm elections.
And until the states wise up and repeal the ill-conceived 17th Amendment, as evidenced by concerns about the integrity of the outcome of Alabama's and Pennsylvania's special elections, patriot candidates need to win elections by a large enough margin to compensate for possible deep state ballot box fraud, associated MSM scare tactics, and interference from people like Soros.
Hacking Democracy - The Hack
Build the new plants so they can burn coal or natural gas.
Obama’s war on coal miners was just another tool he and Jarrett used to lower the development of our nation.
Good. I was waiting for them to do this. I don’t particularly like the potential chance for triple the price in my electricity bill.
IIRC, NY has access to a fair bit of Natural Gas, in the western part of the state. Makes sense that they'd use it.
I don't have the source, but if my memory is correct because of no pipelines, no new terminals etc, to Massachusetts and they are making them pay through the nose.
You don't really think all that money went to Solyndra (and others like it) do you?
Taxpayers were on the hook for more than $2.2 billion in expected costs from the federal government’s energy loan guarantee programs. Solar power is not yet economically viable, no matter how much Democrats jump and dance and say so.
There is a difference between being technically viable and economically viable. You need both.
At the time I thought that the money could have been better spent on improving current technologies that provide electrical power 24/7.
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